1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information print apparatus and method for printing information of a digital document such as a hypermedia document, or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, with the spread of computers and network environments, more documents are created and managed in offices not as orthodox paper documents but as digital documents using wordprocessors or the like. Digital documents used in such environment offer new application methods that utilize convenient features unlike orthodox paper documents.
For example, hypermedia documents built on World Wide Webs (WWWs) using, e.g., the Internet are stored at different locations in units of information topics in a plurality of document servers that are distributed on the network and operate independently. More specifically, unlike in a conventional method that linearly manages an information group like a conventional paper document in units of "pages", information is managed nonlinearly. In order to look up hypermedia documents, a user acquires information by connecting to document servers corresponding to required "topics", and prepares the entire document on the user's side. For example, in an on-demand print method which is receiving a lot of attention in recent years, information corresponding to a user's request is read out from each document server, and is printed in the order requested by the user.
Upon printing document information such as wordprocessor documents which are stored in one or a plurality of files, a document is printed by designating pages, and is not linked with other documents. WWW hypermedia documents and the like are separately stored in units of topics, as described above, and only a required topic is printed upon request.
More specifically, since paper documents are linearly managed by a sequence of page numbers, and hypermedia documents are nonlinearly managed by links among topics, printing a hypermedia document is a conversion from nonlinear information to linear information.
FIG. 14 is a functional block diagram showing the module arrangement associated with such digital document print apparatus. More specifically, this print apparatus is constituted by a user input unit 90, an information storage unit 91, a link information management unit 92, an information reception unit 94 which is connected to a network line 8 and receives information from an external document server, a link information extraction unit 95, a print buffer memory 96, and a print unit 97 which has a page number management unit (not shown) and controls the print buffer memory 96. The print unit 97 informs a printer 98 of the presence of printable information in the print buffer memory 96, and the printer 98 prints the information.
The print operation in the digital document print apparatus with the above arrangement will be described below with reference to the flow chart shown in FIG. 15.
The information reception unit 94 forms a message as a transmission request of stored information with respect to the storage location of document information input and designated by the user input unit 90, and transmits the message via the network line 8. The information reception unit 94 waits until the requested document information is transmitted. Upon reception of the information, the information reception unit 94 transfers the received information to the information storage unit 91, which informs the print unit 97 that the new information is stored.
The print unit 97 writes the document information in the print buffer memory 96 in units of print pages, and assigns page numbers. The print unit 97 informs the printer 98 of the presence of printable information in the print buffer memory 96, and the printer 98 prints information for one page stored in the print buffer memory 96.
Upon completion of printing up to the last page, the page number management unit of the print unit 97 resets the page number to 0, and ends processing.
When a digital document is to be processed in such network environment, the user reads out some pieces of information associated with desired topics and selectively prints them upon looking up nonlinearly managed information distributed on the network.
However, when the print apparatus prints information by tracking links among those pieces of information, there are a very large number of information links including links to identical, recurring information, and hence, such print method may often pose a problem.
For example, when information which is being displayed is to be printed, the Mosaic software as a popular WWW viewer prints only an "information page" (corresponding to the above-mentioned topic) which is read out at that time, but does not print another information page to which this information page is linked. When the user wants to print another information page, he or she must display the information and determine whether or not he or she wants to print the displayed information.
When nonlinearly stored information is converted into linear information, and the converted information is printed, the print order may often pose a problem. That is, the converted linear information may be printed in an inappropriate order, and may have contents which are not easy to understand. On the other hand, identical information may recur upon tracking information links, and paper sheets may be wasted if information is printed in every such occasions. Furthermore, an access error to information may often lead to a print instruction error, and cannot often be reflected in the print result.